Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the future of our Party
and our country.

The voters obviously wanted to get our attention last week. While I
would have preferred a gentler reproach than the one they delivered, I'm
not discouraged nor should any of us be. Democrats had a good election
night. We did not. But no defeat is permanent. And parties, just like individuals,
show their character in adversity. Now, is the occasion to show ours.

The election was not an affirmation of the other party's program. Try
as hard as I could, I couldn't find much evidence that my Democratic friends
were offering anything that resembled a coherent platform or principled
leadership on the critical issues that confront us today.

Nor do I believe Americans rejected our values and governing philosophy.
On the contrary, I think they rejected us because they felt we had come
to value our incumbency over our principles, and partisanship, from both
parties, was no longer a contest of ideas, but an ever cruder and uncivil
brawl over the spoils of power.

I am convinced that a majority of Americans still consider themselves
conservatives or right of center. They still prefer common sense conservatism
to the alternative. They want their government to operate as their families
operate, on a realistic budget, with an eye on the future that spurns self-indulgence
in the short term for the sake of lasting prosperity, that respects hard
work and individual initiative, and that shows no favoritism to one group
of Americans over another. Americans had elected us to change government,
and they rejected us because they believed government had changed us. We
must spend the next two years reacquainting the public and ourselves with
the reason we came to office in the first place: to serve a cause greater
than our self-interest.

Common sense conservatives believe in a short list of self-evident truths:
love of country; respect for our unique influence on history; a strong
defense and strong alliances based on mutual respect and mutual responsibility;
steadfast opposition to threats to our security and values that matches
resources to ends wisely; and confident, reliable, consistent leadership
to advance human rights, democracy, peace and security.

We believe every individual has something to contribute and deserves
the opportunity to reach his or her God-given potential. We believe in
increasing wealth and expanding opportunity; in low taxes; fiscal discipline,
free trade and open markets. We believe in competition, rewarding hard
work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.

We believe in work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility.
We believe in the integrity and values of families, neighborhoods and communities.
We believe in limited government in a federal system, individual and property
rights, and finding solutions to public problems closest to the people.

We believe in the rule of law and equal justice under the law, victim's
rights and taxpayers' rights, and judges who interpret the Constitution
and don't usurp, by legislating from the bench, the public's right to elect
representatives to write our laws.

Common sense conservatives believe that the government that governs
least governs best; that government should do only those things individuals
cannot do for themselves, and do them efficiently. Much rides on that principle:
the integrity of the government, our prosperity; and every American's self-respect,
which depends, as it always has, on one's own decisions and actions, and
cannot be provided as another government benefit.

Stand up for these values. Argue our principles for our country's sake
and not just ours. We are the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan. Take
on the big problems. Don't hide from hard challenges. Act on principle.
Show Americans there are things that matter more to us than our incumbency.
Do the right thing, and the politics will take care of itself.

Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins. And the
people will punish it. We were elected to reduce the size of government
and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. Then we lavished
money, in a time of war, on thousands of projects of dubious, if any, public
value. We responded to a problem facing some Americans by providing every
retired American with a prescription drug benefit, and adding another trillion
dollars to a bankrupt entitlement. We increased the size of government
in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office.
And the people punished us. We lost our principles and our majority. And
there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles
first.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan vetoed a highway bill because it because it had
152 earmarks. Last year, a Republican Congress passed a highway bill with
6,371 special projects costing the taxpayers twenty-four billion dollars.
Those and other earmarks passed by a Republican Congress included fifty
million for an indoor rainforest, $500,000 for a teapot museum; $350,000
for an Inner Harmony Foundation and Wellness Center; and 223 million for
a bridge to nowhere. I didn't see those projects in the fine print of the
Contract with America, and neither did the voters.

A century ago, Teddy Roosevelt took on the special interests. Let the
party of Teddy Roosevelt take the lead in cleaning up Washington today.
Let's start with pork barrel spending and corporate welfare; eliminate
all earmarks; pass the line item veto; employ honest budget accounting;
and end emergency spending bills for non emergencies as a way around budget
limits. Let's ban all gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers, and keep lobbyists
off the floors of the House and Senate.

We have more significant priorities ahead of us than finding new ways
to spend money unwisely. When Social Security was established, forty-one
workers supported a single retiree; today it's three. Health care costs
add more to the cost of a new car manufactured in the U.S. than steel.
By 2045, spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with
interest on the national debt, will consume 84 cents out of every federal
dollar.

We can leave these difficult problems to our unlucky successors, after
they've grown worse, and harder to fix. Or we can bring all parties to
the table, and hammer out a principled solution that makes the difficult
choices necessary to support the needs of retirees, promote high quality
health care at lower costs, protect the future security of workers; and
restores the bonds of trust between the generations.

We can do the same on the issue of immigration. I understand the magnitude
of the problem. We can do all that is possible to defend our borders from
illegal immigration, and affirm the rule of law. When we have made these
improvements, we must still recognize that job opportunities here and poverty
elsewhere in the world will still attract immigrants desperate to improve
their lives, and who will use increasingly desperate measures to do so.
We can devise a rational and fair process, which protects our security
and affirms America's promise as a land of opportunity.

My friends, change is coming at Americans faster today than ever before.
Fifty years ago, we produced and sold almost entirely for our domestic
market. Today, we compete in a global marketplace against 1.3 billion Chinese
and 1.1 billion Indians.

Over the last two decades, because we have expanded free trade and open
markets, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more
than 700 million in China and 200 million in India. As their economies
grow, developing nations offer not just competition - but vast new consumer
markets for American goods and services. And raising hundreds of millions
of people from poverty is the best shield against the attraction of extremism.

Thanks, in part, to Republican economic policies, America still has
the most productive, flexible and energetic free economy in the world.

But for many Americans - behind the positive macro-economic statistics
- once reliable bedrocks like pensions, health care plans and even middle
class jobs no longer feel secure. And with science and technology the key
to high wage jobs, many parents fear their children won't have the same
opportunities they had.

In the global economy what you learn is what you earn. But today, half
of Hispanics and half of African Americans entering high school will never
graduate. By the 12th grade, U.S. students in math and science score near
the bottom of all industrialized nations. As Bill Gates said" "This isn't
an accident or flaw in the system. It is the system."

We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower
parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract
and reward superior teachers, and have a fair, but sure process to weed
out incompetents.

When Ronald Reagan took office, a blackberry was something you used
to make jam; today it is a vital link in a wireless communication network
that spans the globe. The broadband revolution is transforming every facet
of communications from the internet to entertainment to telephone service
to the delivery of health care services to supply chain management. Yet
over the last decade, America has dropped from 2nd in the world to 19th
in broadband development and connectivity. In the real world of global
competition if we don't reverse those trends, we will risk our prosperity
and leave many Americans in rural areas far behind the rest of us.

"The dogmas of the quiet past," Abraham Lincoln said, "are inadequate
to the stormy present. As our case is new, we must think anew. We must
disenthrall ourselves." Across the generations, those words still ring
true.

To keep our nation prosperous, strong and growing we have to rethink,
reform and reinvent: the way we educate our children; train our workers;
deliver health care services; support retirees; fuel our transportation
network; stimulate research and development; and harness new technologies.
Let that challenge be the new Republican calling. Let's invite a genuine
contest of ideas within our party and with the other party. For conservatism,
as Ronald Reagan told us "is not a narrow ideology."

When I drive home at night, I pass people waiting at a bus stop, and
imagine their lives. A woman of Hispanic heritage, maybe thirty five, with
three kids, is waiting for a bus on a cold street in the middle of the
night so she can start her job. While you and I are home relaxing with
our families over dinner, she and thousands like her are working late into
the night in the offices we left, emptying waste baskets, cleaning up kitchens,
scrubbing bathroom floors. She - like first generation Americans before
her - is sacrificing so her children can climb the ladder of American opportunity.

When we debate simplifying the tax code - which we must do -- I want
us to remember that admirable woman, and ask ourselves have we done all
we can to remove obstacles for her and millions like her to climb the next
rung on the ladder.

I want us to remember the worker in Michigan, in his fifties, who served
a tour in Vietnam, married, four kids, two in college, who worked over
thirty years at an auto parts plant, and never took a day of sick leave.
Last year his plant downsized and his job was eliminated, and he felt as
if a trap door had opened beneath him and he and his family had fallen
through it.

America is the greatest trading nation in the world. Competition keeps
us strong, and most Americans know that building a moat around America
is a formula for stagnation. I am proud of our party's leadership on free
trade while the Democrats embrace the siren song of protectionism. But
we are not a nation of Social Darwinists, who believe only in the survival
of the fittest. Work in America is more than a paycheck; it a source of
pride, self-reliance and identity.

I want our party to say to that worker in Michigan, and thousands like
him: when you work hard; play by the rules, serve your country and community;
and the burden of change arrives suddenly on your doorstep, you and your
family are not just forgotten or disposable.

Our most important obligation, of course, is to protect Americans from
the threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity
itself. They are moral monsters, but they are also a disciplined, dedicated
movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom
and murder, has access to science, technology and mass communications,
and is determined to acquire and use against us and our allies weapons
of mass destruction. The institutions that sustained us throughout the
Cold War and the doctrine of deterrence we relied on are no longer adequate
to protect us in a struggle where suicide bombers might obtain the world's
most terrifying weapons.

The war against terrorism is part of a larger struggle around the globe
between the forces of integration and disintegration, between builders
and destroyers, between modernizers and those who would shackle humanity,
especially women, in a feudal theocracy. The question facing us is not
whether America will play a large and shaping role in that struggle, but
whether we will play it well or badly. We cannot afford to take a holiday
from history.

To defend ourselves we must do everything better and smarter than we
did before. We must rethink, renew and rebuild the structure and mission
of our military; the capabilities of our intelligence and law enforcement
agencies; the purposes of our alliances, the reach and scope of our diplomacy,
and the capacities of all branches of government to defend us against the
peril we now face. We need to marshal all elements of American power: our
military, economy, investment, trade and technology. We need to strengthen
our alliances, and build support in other nations, which must, whether
they believe it or not, confront the same threat to their way of life that
we do. And we must marshal the power of our ideals.

Some on both the Left and Right argue that our advocacy of democratic
values in Iraq and elsewhere is reckless and vain; that freedom only works
for wealthy nations and Western cultures. But a world where our political
and economic values had a realistic chance at becoming a global creed was
the principal object of our foreign policy in the last century. We conservatives
were its most effective advocates, and it must remain our principal object
today. We understood that our security interests and the global advance
of our ideals are inextricably linked, and we surely didn't accept the
notion that freedom was the product of our power and wealth. Our wealth
and power are the product of our freedom.

We must appreciate the security implications of every policy debate.
When we debate energy legislation, for instance, we must recognize that
the oil tankers stretching from the Persian Gulf to our ports also channel
petrodollars to oil dictatorships -- dollars used to buy centrifuges to
enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles; to finance Hamas, Hezbollah
and al Qaeda; and to fund the madrassas that train the next generation
of terrorists.

We should lead our allies in an international effort to reduce our mutual
dependence on oil, employing the services of the brightest, most creative
and accomplished scientists, business leaders, military and government
officials, could do as much to defeat the terrorists as any other policy
decision we make, and would make American businesses and workers the leaders
in developing new technologies. And, obviously, increased and accelerated
development of nuclear energy is an important part of the solution.

We must also prepare, across all levels of government, far better than
we have done, to respond quickly and effectively to another terrorist attack
or natural calamity. I am not an advocate of big government, and the private
sector has an important role to play in homeland security. But when Americans
confront a catastrophe, either natural or man-made, their government, across
jurisdictions, should be organized and ready to deliver bottled drinking
water to dehydrated babies and rescue the aged and infirm trapped in a
hospital with no electricity.

Now, I would like to speak briefly about the issue that is uppermost
on the minds of Americans. I'll make another trip to Iraq in the coming
weeks, and will speak more extensively on the subject when I return. But,
let me make a few observations here.

Good and patriotic Americans disagree about the wisdom of the original
decision to remove Saddam Hussein. I supported it and still do. And clearly
the country is divided on the question of how we proceed from here. But
I believe all Americans agree on this: to treat this war as a partisan
issue for the advantage of either party would dishonor the sacrifices of
the young men and women who have fought in it so bravely.

We have made a great many mistakes in this war, and history will hold
us to account for them just as the voters did last week. The situation
in Iraq is dire. But I believe victory is still attainable. And I am certain
that our defeat there would be a catastrophe, and not only for the United
States. But we will not succeed if we no longer have the will to win.

Americans are tired of Iraq because they are not convinced we can still
win there without an intolerable loss of additional lives and resources.
I understand that. But in no other time are we more morally obliged to
speak the truth to our country, as we best see it, than in a time of war.
So, let me say this, without additional combat forces we will not win this
war. We can, perhaps, attempt to mitigate somewhat the terrible consequences
of our defeat, but even that is an uncertain prospect. We don't have adequate
forces in Iraq to clear and hold insurgent strongholds; to provide security
for rebuilding local institutions and economies; to arrest sectarian violence
in Baghdad and disarm Sunni and Shia militias; to train the Iraqi Army,
and to embed American personnel in weak, and often corrupt Iraqi police
units. We need to do all these things if we are to succeed.

They will not be easy to find. The day after 9/11/, we should have begun
to increase significantly the size of the Army and Marine Corps. But we
did not. So we must turn again to those Americans and their families who
have already sacrificed so much in this cause. That is a very hard thing
to do. But if we intend to win, then we must.

It is not fair or easy to look a soldier in the eye and tell him he
must shoulder a rifle again and risk his life in a third tour in Iraq.
Many of them will not want to. They feel have already suffered far more
than the rest of us to win this war. Their families will be even more upset.
And they will be right. It is a hard thing to ask of them. But ask it we
must - if, and I emphasize if, we have the will to win. As troubling as
it is, I can ask a young Marine to go back to Iraq. And he will go, not
happily perhaps, but he will go because he and his comrades are the first
patriots among us, and he will fight his hardest there for his country
to prevail. Of that, I have no doubt. But I can only ask him if I share
his commitment to victory.

What I cannot do is ask him to return to Iraq, to risk life and limb,
so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year. That is more
to ask than patriotism requires. It would not be in the interest of the
country, and it surely would be an intolerable sacrifice for so poor an
accomplishment. It would be immoral, and I could not do it.

My friends, before I leave, let me again say that though we suffered
a tough defeat last week, we will recover if we learn our lesson well and
once again offer Americans enlightened, effective and principled leadership.
In 1977, after Republicans lost the presidency and Democrats held large
majorities in Congress, Ronald Reagan offered precisely that kind of leadership,
and led us to victory in just three years time. We can do it again if we
lead and inspire as he did.

That was not my first experience with President Reagan's wisdom. When
I was their involuntary guest, the North Vietnamese went to great lengths
to restrict news from home to the statements and activities of prominent
opponents of the war. They wanted us to believe that our country had forgotten
us. They never mentioned Ronald Reagan to us, or played his speeches over
the camp loudspeakers. No matter. We knew about him. New additions to our
ranks told us how Governor and Mrs. Reagan were committed to our liberation
and our cause. They were among the few prominent Americans who did not
subscribe to the then fashionable notion that America and the West had
entered our inevitable decline.

We came home to a country that had lost a war and the best sense of
itself; a country beset by serious social and economic problems. Assassinations,
riots, scandals, contempt for political, religious and educational institutions,
gave the appearance that we had become a dysfunctional society. Patriotism
was sneered at. The military scorned. And the world anticipated the collapse
of our global influence. The great, robust democracy that had given its
name to the century appeared exhausted.

Ronald Reagan believed differently. He possessed an unshakeable faith
in America's spirit that proved more durable than the prevailing political
sentiments of the time, and he became President to prove it. His confidence
was a tonic to men who had come home eager to put the war behind us and
for our country to do likewise. His was a faith that shouted to tyrants,
"tear down this wall." When walls were all I had for a world, his faith
in our country gave me hope in a desolate place.

It was the faith he shared with my friend, Mike Christian.

Fellow Americans, we can achieve whatever task we set for our country,
and whatever task we set for our party, as long as we remember why we came
to Washington in the first place. We came to honor Ronald Reagan's and
Mike Christian's faith in America, the greatest nation and greatest force
for good on earth. If we remember that then all will be well for our party
and our country.